Taste is a strange thing. You start to form an opinion on something from the first contact with it. Take Flotilla for example - a four piece indie-rock band that includes a classically trained harpist and, according to their press release, "a noted composer of contemporary concert music." Now to be honest, the first thing flashed into my mind was Charlotte Church - the well known child prodigy that went from Opera to pop in a blaze of mediocrity - and the first parts of my taste was beginning to warn me off.
However, I persevered and found the band's album, Disaster Poetry, to be a somewhat enjoyable and engaging album, if somewhat fitting into the dreaded category of music you would play at a dinner party and could easily sit alongside Dido and other such bands in a CD collection of middle aged women who only buy one or two albums a year, usually in Tesco.
The problem with Disaster Poetry is that it is really unthreatening. The album never really changes gears at all and seems to just drift along at a serene pace. This does not mean that the album lacks passion, far from it in fact, as vocalist and lyricist Veronica Charnley's angelic voice soars throughout. It's just a shame that a voice like this is not really pushed by the band to do more. Charnley has a great voice and it is not pushed nearly as much as it should be.
This album is not really my cup of tea. It's not a bad album but at the same time it's not something I would ever buy on my own accord. It all comes down to taste, and there is certainly a large market for Flotilla and it's a very profitable market as well. It's just I'm not really in that group and don't think I ever will be. However, I do now have another Christmas present for my mum sorted.
